


It Burns like Sand

by DarthSuki



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The Calamity (Final Fantasy XIV), Trauma, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 14:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20083810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthSuki/pseuds/DarthSuki
Summary: It doesn't matter how many years its been. Whenever Samilen feels the scrape of sand against his skin blown up by the scorching winds of Thanalan, he can't help butremember.He always remembers.





	It Burns like Sand

**Author's Note:**

> This work features my WoL/OC Samilen Jawantal, a Keeper Miqo'te who specializes in botany among several other things and a character I often play through during the events of Final Fantasy XIV. 
> 
> [If you would like to learn more about him, you can find more of his information, backstory and lots of screenshots over on his tumblr blog!](https://samilenjawantal.tumblr.com/)

Samilen can feel the heat brushing against his skin. Like an ignored pet eager for attention it curls around his legs and arms, pressing against his skin with such a pressure that it almost feels suffocating. There’s simply no escaping the way it clutches at his limbs nor the weight in which it fills his lungs with each shaking breath.

Golden eyes try to blink away the burning haze from the dust kicked up by an army’s worth of feet trudging through desolate earth. It does little to help clear his sight, moreso making his eyes burn all the hotter, as if trapping yet more sand where he wants it least.

Thanalan is not an area that Samilen is all that used to traversing. He is far more familiar with the cover of trees and foliage, keeping him hidden out of sight in ways almost like a lover’s gentle embrace. There is the occasional outcropping of brush and flora, though it’s hardly enough for Samilen to even call it little more than a _miracle_ for how much sun and how little rain the area seems to get.

Still, a botanist is a botanist, and he finds plenty to be amazed about with the flora of Thanalan’s unforgiving swaths of desert.

But there’s yet another reason that he avoids it on principle, one far less obvious than he’d let on about than simply loathing the heat, sand and rampant greed steeped into Ul’dah’s culture.

It’s the constant reminders.

It’s not rare for the wind to blow sharp and hard in some of the particularly open sections of Central Thanalan, especially with so few buildings, trees or objects otherwise in the way to break it. It’s one of the many things that Samilen finds himself grateful for in regards to the Gridanian forests, where the thicket of greenery often keeps the wind to a gentle minimum. In the desert, however, the rushing air is wont to pick up much of the loose sand around, making each even gentle brush of wind feel biting and painful. If someone was not prepared or careful on some of the worse days, they’d find themselves scraped raw from being so constantly buffeted by the sand-laced wind.

Even with most of his bare skin covered, it’s hard to escape it completely. Hard to escape the sand, the heat-

The memories.

Even as the Keeper kneels to pick idly at choice bits of a flower native to the region for purposes yet unveiled to him by Fufuscha, the nagging warmth and burning pain against what little skin is bare to the wind is enough to pull his mind and thoughts back to a time far before. 

A time where he held a bow instead of an axe. A time when he was younger and less experienced in the ways of life and loss. A time when he found joy in the simple aspect of brotherhood with his fellow members of the Twin Adders.

A time before the Calamity.

Or rather, a time _just_ before the Calamity. 

Mere minutes and hours before, marching on the frontier of the Carteneu Flats; the wind had picked up then as well, hard and sharp with the loose flecks of sand that scraped and burned against necks and cheeks and hands.

The sand, burning raw against skin, made it always feel so _real_.

Where Samilen had allowed the onward years since to leave the visions feeling akin to faint, traumatic nightmares, he couldn’t deny the realness of the pain that came from the sand that made raw his hands and fingers that held tight to the body of a bow. It’s etched deep into his mind, forever branded on his conscious that can’t be washed away no matter how many sleepless nights he yearns to forget it all.

Lost friends. Lost soldiers. Powerless to protect them, to do more than helplessly watch as the battlefield burns around him, sucking the life from the air and the air from his lungs. 

There are screams hanging on the air and dripping like spilled blood in his mind. He can smell copper and iron, the scent so pungent that it almost makes the man bend forward and retch if it isn’t for the fact that his body is frozen and his mind is racing.

All the while, the wind whips around him, sand tearing into bare flesh and searing by the fires and explosions blazing around the battlefield.

It burns and burns and **_burns._**

All in a flash, Samilen is suddenly back to the present moment. He blinks, looking down at the flower blooming between his thumb and forefinger, color bright yet beneath the shade of one lonesome tree breaking the otherwise plain desert landscape. He blinks again, then breathes, realizing that the burning is coming from his aching lungs--how long was he holding his breath?

Samilen’s body is shaking and his chest almost _aches_ for how hard his heart is beating against the backside of his sternum. 

Once there is no longer a panicked need for breath, the man catches once more his thoughts and remembers where he is, what he’s doing. 

The pieces fall back into place after a few moments, he gaining back the slow realization that he is not _there _and it is not _then_ anymore.

With a swallow of both a rock in his throat and the memories in his mind, Samilen plucks the flower and gently places it into one of the glass vials in the pouch at his hip--

He wishes he can do the same with the pain that follows him, as stubborn and merciless as the desert sand.


End file.
